WWII veteran Paul Hunter celebrates 100th birthday next month

MANSFIELD — Paul Hunter sat in a blue cloth chair in the corner of his room, his walker in front of him.

“I understand you’ve got a big birthday coming up,” I said, after introducing myself.

“Yeah,” Hunter responded. He paused for a moment.

“Twenty-seven.”

Hunter’s youngest daughter, Anita Douville, chuckled. Her dad will celebrate his 100th birthday on Feb. 27.

There are plenty of ways you could describe Hunter. He’s a loving father, a grandfather of nine, an avid golfer and a World War II veteran.

But his resilience and tenderheartedness are perhaps the most obvious qualities.

“He had such a tough upbringing and went through a lot in his childhood,” said Gloria Carlson, one of Hunter’s daughters.

Carlson once asked her father why she’d never seen him angry or bitter about the challenges he faced.

“He said, ‘The only person that would hurt would be me. I wouldn’t accomplish anything with that kind of attitude,'” she said. “And that’s kind of been his attitude through life.”

‘It was right out of a Dickens novel’

Hunter was born in Columbus and spent his early years living in Marion with his grandfather and grandmother.

He can still remember nights spent on the family porch at the sunset, listening to his grandfather play the fiddle while the neighbors gathered around, taking in the music as they chewed tobacco.

His grandmother was an excellent cook, known for her fried chicken and peach pie.

After awhile, Hunter went back to live with his mother, who eventually placed him in a children’s home in Marion. Douville said he spent about eight years at the home before aging out at 16.

“When he went into the children’s home, from the stories he told, it was right out of a Dickens novel,” Carlson said..

“The children had to work hard and their punishment was hard. He talked about having a rope around his waist and they’d lower him out and he’d wash windows.”

Douville believes her father’s time at the children’s home shaped his strong work ethic. The home was a working farm and boys were required to pitch in outdoors.

“The boys had to work in the fields and he plowed with horses,” she said. “They would have to feed the horses, the cows, all of that, and then go to school.”

After aging out of the home, Hunter supported himself by working at a bakery, washing dishes at a restaurant and helping out at local farms. At age 18, he went to work for Universal Cooler, which later became Tecumseh Products.

The Pacific Theater

Hunter joined the Navy at 19, serving from 1942 to 1945. He shipped out on the USS John Land, a transporter vessel.

The ship carried Marines across the Pacific Theater, enabling the capture and occupation of several islands then occupied by the Japan — Saipan, Tinian, the southern Palau islands, Leyte, Luzon and Iwo Jima.

Carlson said he worked as a bosun, ferrying soldiers and supplies back-and-forth from the main ship to the islands.

At one point, he even transported the president of the Philippines.

Hunter said the Marines had to wear the enemy down at every stop.

“They would not give up,” he said of the Japanese soldiers. “They were good fighters.”

“I felt sorry for the natives,” he added. “They were in the middle of it.”

Hunter said he’s proud of his time in the military, but didn’t appreciate the way some of his comrades treated the Navajo Native Americans on board ship.

During World War II, the Marine Corps hired 29 Navajo men to create a code based on their complex, unwritten language.

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, this code was primarily used by assigning Navajo words to key phrases and military tactics.

This system allowed the “Navajo Code Talkers” to work much quicker than code breaking machines at the time and gave the Marines a critical advantage throughout the war.

“The pity was, the Navajos, they saved a lot of lives and it made me mad because these guys were making fun of them,” Hunter said.

Carlson said her father doesn’t like to talk about the horrors he saw from the boat. He prefers to talk about the antics that occurred.

Hunter still recalls discovering smuggled beer on the ship and the time his crew mates snuck a monkey aboard.

He chuckled as he pictured the captain’s fury upon discovering the stowaway. The ship’s leader shouted, pointed to an officer and assigned him the task of taking the monkey back to shore.

Nevertheless, Hunter said the creature didn’t cause too much trouble.

“He was well-guarded,” he said.

A family man

After his service in the Navy, Hunter worked at Tecumseh Products in Marion for more than 40 years. He began his career in the machine shop and eventually became a foreman.

He met his wife of 62 years, Clara, on a blind date. The couple went ballroom dancing and married on July 22, 1946. They had four children — Shirley, Roger, Gloria and Anita.

“Family was important to him, because he never had a father growing up and his mother was in and out of the picture,” Douville said.

Carlson described Hunter as an involved father who coached her brother’s Little League team and played baseball with all of his kids.

“We did a lot of ice skating and one of the best parts was when Dad came down and ice skated with us,” she said. “He loved to play crack the whip.”

Hunter also volunteered with the Pleasant High School athletic boosters. He helped build dugouts, erect bleachers and even washed out the pans after spaghetti dinner fundraisers. For years, he took film of football and basketball games at Pleasant High School in Marion.

“I think it was 8 millimeter at first,” Douville said. “When he first started doing the football games, they didn’t have a press box on the bleachers. He actually was on a telephone pole and had this little platform built.

“Dad would shimmy up the pole to take film during the football games.”

Hunter’s children said his habit of serving others extended to his own mother, who’d placed him in a children’s home years ago. He was there consistently, doing odd jobs around the house and driving her to appointments.

“It always was amazing to all us children. Most Sundays we were at her house,” Carlson said. “To have that kind of forgiveness is really amazing.”

‘I’m just one of the lucky ones’

Even after his children grew up, Hunter remained active.

He golfed several times a week during his retirement and was a longtime member at Valley View Golf Course in Galion. He hung up his clubs for good in 2022, at the age of 98.

Manager Mike Stuckman said Hunter is likely the oldest golfer in the course’s history.

“We had a few that reached 90,” he said.

Hunter was legally blind during his last few years on the golf course, but he didn’t let that stop him.

“His golfing buddies would kind of line him up, tell him where the hole was, how many yards away,” Carlson said. “If he hit an errant ball, they’d help him find it.”

Stuckman described Hunter as a nice, soft-spoken guy.

“He’s very much a gentleman all the time,” he said. “We miss him.”

Hunter said he didn’t have any tips or tricks or making it to 100.

“Everybody asks me that,” he said. “I’m just one of those lucky ones.

“Keep straight and narrow and everything’ll be all right.”